The present invention relates to electronic systems, more specifically to devices for shielding the various components of such electronic systems from electromagnetic energy.
Electronic systems are constructed from various types of components, e.g., amplifiers, splitters, comparators, attenuators and the like. In many applications, some of these components must be shielded from electromagnetic energy to protect the components from becoming inoperative. One such application is where microwave energy is delivered to the system and used or acted upon by the individual components. These systems must be constructed to electromagnetically shield the individual components. This is particularly important for those components which are particularly sensitive to the effects of microwave energy, e.g., printed circuits. These types of components must be isolated from extraneous electromagnetic radiation which would affect their operation. Furthermore, the components must be shielded to reduce the potential of electromagnetic energy emission to the external environment.
Presently, electromagnetic shielding is performed by independently placing each component in a housing formed from an electrically conductive material, e.g., aluminum. The individually housed components are then assembled and supported in some manner to construct the overall device. Any necessary interconnections between the numerous components are made using appropriate cables and wave guides. The device is then further electromagnetically isolated by being placed in an housing formed from an electrically conductive material.
While this type of construction achieves the desired result, that is, electromagnetic isolation of the numerous device components, the resulting structure is large and expensive to build.
Furthermore, it is desirable to provide separate electromagnetic isolation for the individual subunits, e.g., daughterboards, of the components making up the device, specifically subunits of printed circuits which are particularly vulnerable to microwave energy. However, presently available construction techniques make the separate electromagnetic isolation of these individual subunits impractical.
It would thus be beneficial to provide a mechanism by which the numerous components of an electronic device are more easily electromagnetically isolated as a package prior to assembling the complete device and further to provide a mechanism for individually isolating the separate subunits of the electronic components.